


Self Care Tips for Teenage CEO Vigilante Students on the Go

by collectivefandomstuff



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Batfamily (DCU), Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Humor, POV Tim Drake, Platonic Relationships, Tim Drake is Bad at Self-Care, Tim gets a cat, Tim tries to Self-Care, i can't believe that's a tag, no beta we die like robins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:46:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27565495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/collectivefandomstuff/pseuds/collectivefandomstuff
Summary: Tim realises that his incessant stress headaches might be indicating something and tries to find a way to destress. His friends and family offer lots of advice, none of it helpful. Also there's a cat.
Relationships: Batfamily Members & Tim Drake
Comments: 6
Kudos: 241





	Self Care Tips for Teenage CEO Vigilante Students on the Go

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in a blur tonight because I was bored so it might not be that well constructed (also there might be some spelling/grammatical errors, sorry). Still, I had fun writing it and I hope you have fun reading it :)

Sometimes Tim felt like the world could be burning outside his apartment and he wouldn’t even know until he was choking on the smoke. And even then, he would probably just keep working until he passed out. Between College, Wayne Enterprises, and his extra gig as a night-time vigilante Tim had approximately no free time and a negative amount of chill. Unfortunately, this was becoming a problem.  
  
As it turns out, the amount of years you could spend running yourself ragged was finite and between the constant stress headaches and the mounting insomnia Tim was forced reckon with the fact that he needed a self-care routine. An hour or so a day would be enough, he figured. An hour spent doing something “destressing” (Tam had pointedly told him that the word he was looking for was “relaxing” and frankly, Tim was ignoring the subtext of that).  
  
The mission was simple: find a hobby. Two months later, Tim had to admit to himself that “unwinding” (Dick’s suggestion) was one thing he was not naturally gifted at. He had tried- with intense focus, which might be the problem now that he considered it -and failed spectacularly.  
  
Initially, Tim had tackled Operation Destress in his own way; by exhaustively researching the subject. Following the internet’s recommendation, he had created a “calm space” in his apartment, complete with bonsai trees and scented candles, where he attempted to meditate. Now, Tim could meditate -it was part of his training -what he couldn’t do was meditate the way these happy Instagram gurus told him to. It made him feel focused, sure, but not in a “we’re all part of the same great world I exist in the now and clouds are beautiful aren’t they?” sort of way as much as a “I can find all your weak spots and subdue you within two seconds” sort of way. Soon enough, Tim’s “calm oasis” became another good place to stack his reports. He kept the bonsai though.  
  
Next, he tried jogging. Within a week he’d calculated the probable increase in distance he would cover during his hour as time progressed and meticulously planned his route to avoid traffic while still hitting a few well-known hot spots for shady deals. Then, he tried smoothies and healthy cooking. After three days he realised it was retracting from his life satisfaction more than it was adding to it. After that fiasco, he decided to outsource for inspiration.  
  
His first stop was Steph. She took him to yoga, which was better than anything he’d tried so far. Listening to the middle-aged mothers two mats away gossip about their suburban neighbourhood and sharing snide looks with Steph whenever Mrs Hannigan acted like she was the true instructor of this class certainly helped him destress. Sadly, about three weeks into his new life as someone who does yoga his identity was discovered and the resulting hounding from the ladies in class (including Mrs Hannigan who offered him private lessons, which… Tim chose to erase from his long time memory, thank you) made the whole experience untenable.  
  
So, Yoga was a bust.  
  
Next on his list of prospective mentors was Dick, who had always appeared way too relaxed for the life he led. Dick took him to an acrobatic gym and then proceeded to make Tim’s not-so-dormant competitive side emerge by showing off for an hour. (Dick vehemently claimed that he was just having fun and did _not_ intend to show off _at all_ , but Tim felt that that testimony was biased and possibly the result of extensive bribes.) The next day, Tim almost couldn’t get out of bed and he spent the rest of the week awkwardly wobbling around in an attempt to not anger his sore muscles.  
  
His brief stint with Cass wasn’t something that he ever wanted to talk about or think about again. It was also the reason he had now developed an abnormal fear of angler fish.  
  
After that, he went to Kon and Bart for advice. Which, he really should have from the get-go. They were the most relaxed people he knew so who better to help him? Bart’s solution was video games, Kon’s was watching football (the suggestion to play football was vetoed by Tim before Kon even got the words out. He might be desperate, but not _that_ desperate.). By the second week of entertaining these new hobbies Tim had already established both a fantasy football league and a promising career in e-sports. His stress levels had not decreased.  
  
Cassie got through about five minutes of her weightlifting pitch before the flashbacks of Dick’s relaxation by rotation idea grew strong enough that Tim just got up and left.  
  
Now, he hadn’t really expected Jason to be of any help at all, since he assumed Jason’s idea of destressing involved beating up drug lords and Tim already did that on a regular basis. Still, he _was_ desperate so he asked anyway. As it turned out, Jason was a treasure trove of perfectly reasonable ideas. Tim declined the cooking idea, arguing that burning down his kitchen wouldn’t help calm him down, but he quite liked the idea of leisurely reading. Tim spent two hours reading _Sense and Sensibility_ (Jason’s suggestion) without getting through a single page. He did however, clean his kitchen and solve a case.  
  
Tim morosely crossed reading off the list.  
  
Jason’s last suggestion was beer, pizza, and movies. This turned out to be the only helpful advice Tim had gotten since Mission Destress started, but it wasn’t really something he could do on a daily basis unless he wanted a coronary.  
  
Since his last mentor hadn’t actually traumatised him, Tim was in slightly higher spirits when he turned to Babs. They scheduled a 30-minute meeting, during which Babs joined Tim’s fantasy football league and they agreed to start a tech company together. Papers were being processed and patents were pending.  
  
Once more disillusioned, Tim turned to the manor for help. Bruce was out of the question, but Tim figured that Alfred must have some good counsel. He did not. In fact, the three hours conversation he had with the man shed some much-needed light on exactly where Bruce’s unhealthy work ethic originated.  
  
Reluctantly, Tim sought out the house’s third inhabitant. Damian’s recommendation, sandwiched between a cornucopia of scoffs and insults, was to pursue artistic expression. He also hinted that animals helped calm you down, which made Tim wonder what Damian would be like without a veritable zoo living in his room. He had thought that Damian’s improved behaviour was due to socialisation and the loving care of Dick, Alfred and, arguably, Bruce sometimes, but maybe it was just because he got a puppy. That, more than anything, convinced Tim to take Damian’s advice to heart.  
  
An artist he was not, but he decided to re-engage with his old photography hobby. He also got a cat. Her name was Mrs Bennet, and she was a menace. She had originally been named Ms Bennet (Jason turned up out of the blue and demanded to name her) but following the reveal of her true nature she had promptly been made a married woman. The photography helped a little, but Tim preferred to take pictures at night, which meant that his allocated one hour of relaxation in the afternoon was still unoccupied and his photography had instead gobbled up much-needed sleeping hours.  
  
At this point, Tim was about ready to throw in the towel. He was now engaged in a heated guerrilla war with Mrs Bennet and his bonsai tree had died. It felt symbolic.  
  
He hadn’t quite reached rock bottom, however, until he actually asked Edward Nygma for advice. There he was, having just put the Riddler in handcuffs for umpteenth time and it just slipped out.  
  
“Hey what do you do to relax? Like, to keep from being too stressed?”  
  
More surprising than Tim’s momentary lapse into complete madness was that Riddler readily offered a perfectly sensible response.  
  
“Penguin favours macramé, but I’m partial to knitting myself.”  
  
So, two months after he started down the disastrous road of sustainable wellbeing, Tim donned a heavy disguise and went shopping for yarn. As he filled his cart with instructional literature, needles, and a large amount of what he still couldn’t help but think of as coloured string, he was hoping desperately that he wouldn’t run into anyone he knew. To admit that he has fallen so low that he took self-help tips from the Riddler would be the cherry on top of this sundae of humiliation.  
  
He got home, noted that Mrs Bennet had shredded the magazines on his coffee table (joke’s on her, Tim planted them there for her to ruin. They were Business Insider and Healthy Magazine) and sat down to begin learning the ancient art of making wonky scarves.  
  
A few months later, Tim could definitively say that he had found his de-stressing method, and his family could heartily attest to the fact that he had more enthusiasm than skill. His first victim has been Steph, who’d been gifted with a matching purple set of mittens and a scarf. At least, they had been vaguely shaped like mittens and a scarf. Dick had received a hat (with earflaps!) in a sickening blue-brown colour (Tim still hadn’t forgotten the gym). Dick, determined to support his brother’s hobby, wore it everywhere. The press had quickly caught on and it escalated into a “where’s waldo?” situation with a running segment on this week’s hat sightings.  
  
Jason, who had been by far the most helpful person among the ones who weren’t currently in Arkham, had gotten a tea cosy in Red Hood red. He refused to admit to liking it, but when Tim last stopped by his apartment Jason’s kettle looked incriminatingly snuggly.  
  
Damian got the yellow sweater that was made for someone with three arms and no head, while Cass got socks, one of them about twice the size of the other. Cassie and Bart each got phone covers though one was more the size of an Ipad and the other one was an unfetching shade of brown that no one except Tim actually liked. Connor got a sweater that could actually fit a human, but Tim’s attempt to knit the Superman symbol onto it had backfired and the pattern now looked vaguely pornographic. For Alfred, Tim made another attempt at socks that went surprisingly well. Unfortunately, the yarn he had chosen turned out to be the most slippery substance known to man. Bruce’s scarf had actually turned out pretty well until Mrs Bennet figured out how to sneak past Tim’s barricade one night. Bruce still pretended to like it, which Tim took to mean he’d read those books on parenting Dick had been pushing his way.  
  
His greatest accomplishment to date was knitting an ugly monstrosity of a thing with pink, glittery yarn. It was a tiny little vest that he managed to wrestle onto Mrs Bennet. Her look of absolute disgust was his greatest victory against her to date.


End file.
